Richard Hall-Wilton

Prof. Richard John Hall-Wilton studied Natural Sciences (physics and geology) at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge University, UK. With the thesis entitled "Diffractive and non-diffractive charm production in deep inelastic scattering at the ZEUS experiment on HERA", he obtained his PhD in experimental particle physics at Bristol University in 1999. Since then he held different research positions at various universities and research institutes: York University Canada, University College London, Wisconsin University, and 6 years with CERN. His adjunct professorship position with Mid-Sweden University in Sundsvall started in 2013. 

Prof. Richard Hall-Wilton has been based primarily at European research institutes - firstly at DESY, then CERN and currently at ESS – with the only exception of two years (1999-2000) in Toronto, Canada, building a detector upgrade for the ZEUS experiment in Hamburg. Throughout his career, he has been centrally involved in designing, developing, building, installing, commissioning and operating advanced detector systems and has a wide and varied experience in detectors. He is a world expert in neutron and diamond detector technologies, and has extensive experience with gaseous detectors and semiconductor detectors. He has developed beam monitors as both safety and monitoring systems, advanced triggers for large experiments, including zero- and minimum-biases for the CMS experiment at the LHC, and also tracking triggers. He was a physics coordinator for heavy flavor physics on the ZEUS experiment in DESY, Hamburg. At CERN, he was a core member of the CMS technical coordination team as well as coordinator of the beam and radiation monitoring for CMS, as well as a key bridge-person between CMS and the LHC machine. 

Since arriving at ESS at the beginning of 2011, Prof. Richard Hall-Wilton has been group leader for the detector group. He is also deputy division head of instrument technologies. This period has comprised building the detector group at ESS, as well as leading the critical R+D effort for ESS to find replacements to the isotope Helium-3 as the detection medium for neutrons. Presently there are approximately 20 partnerships and collaborations from across Europe and several international ones. 

• Neutron detectors
• Advanced detector systems
• Diamond detectors
• Beam monitoring
• Fundamental Physics